Millennium Films has found its star for its upcoming adaptation of Red Sonja: Killjoys and Ant-Man and the Wasp actress Hannah John-Kamen. The Hollywood Reporter revealed that she’ll play the film’s lead character, and that she’s recently completed work on another upcoming project, Netflix’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
The character was originally created for Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian comic series—a female warrior who was inspired by one of Conan creator Robert E. Howard’s other, non-Conan sword and sorcery stories, Red Sonya of Rogatino. She’s appeared in comics ever since, leading a series by Dynamite Comics, and appeared in her own film in 1985.
Millennium Films has been working on a reboot film featuring the character since 2017, and had tapped Bryan Singer to direct it. However, after a sexual misconduct scandal, he was fired and the project was delayed. The studio replaced Singer with Joey Soloway (Transparent), and earlier this year, announced that it had brought on the showrunner of Netflix’s upcoming Tomb Raider anime, Tasha Huo, to write the film.
John-Kamen has appeared in multiple of genre projects, including appearances in Black Mirror, Game of Thrones, Killjoys, Brave New World, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Tomb Raider, Ready Player One, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and the upcoming Resident Evil reboot. She’s handled herself well in plenty of action scenes in all of those projects, and it feels like she’s an excellent choice to play the character.
In a statement to THR, Soloway praised her work, and said that “Her range, sensibilities and strength are all qualities we have been looking for and we couldn’t be more excited to embark on this journey together.”
There’s no word on when the film will begin production, or when it’ll be released.